Scotland ‘haven’t regressed,’ says Steve Clarke

Steve Clarke is adamant Scotland “haven’t regressed” despite their “horrible” run which leaves them with just one win in their last 14.

The Scots are in Zagreb to take on Croatia in their third League A Nations League game after opening the campaign with back-to-back defeats, but Clarke is not focussing on the numbers.

“I don’t bother about stats, I’m not a stats person, I’m not driven by stats,” the head coach said. “We’ve played a lot of really good opponents in the last year, from October last year, the results haven’t been quite what we wanted in terms of victories.

“We haven’t regressed, I don’t think we’ve gone backwards and we’ve always worked hard to try and work forwards.”

The run includes matches these League A games, Euro 2024 and friendlies against nations such as England, France and the Netherlands.

When asked if Scotland are a victim of their own success, Clarke said: “It’s a nice price to pay when you have matches of this calibre, when you qualify for tournaments, when you get to the highest level of the Nations League.

“We’ve done something right to be here, we’re now finding a level which is a little bit more difficult for us, but we have to meet that challenge head on.

“If we do that, we’ll come out the other side with a better group and a better understanding of what you need to do at this level to get positive results.”